GRANDFATHER PLANS A CRIME
During the long hours in which Grandfather waited for Amos, he reviewed
his life, searching like Job to find where he had erred and how he had
brought upon himself the heavy punishments of his old age. He had tried
to do his duty, had preached righteousness, had tried to interpret
the Bible correctly, had given to the poor. He had married, but the
instinct to mate had been implanted in the human heart by God Himself.
Except in this one act, his whole life had been one of self-denial.
In spite of his effort to be righteous, his life had followed a
descending scale since his thirtieth year. Then his wife had died, and
about the same time three families had left the church, two to become
Lutherans, the other to go to church no more. They had all been rich
in this world's goods, and what was far more important, they had been
large families.
Afterwards Mary had married Edward Levis and the danger to her soul
had occupied his anxious heart. He had recovered presently his sense
of security and had built great hopes upon Matthew and Amos and Ellen;
but here again he had been cruelly disappointed--Ellen had left him
and Matthew had behaved shamefully. Last week Millie had come angrily
complaining that Matthew was bewitched; he would not go to church, he
was teaching the children to despise her, and he had taken to reading
books which he had once considered wicked.
"He tells little Matthew that things I say are wrong. My way was him
good enough when we were married. It is that Ellen!"
And now Amos had gone, and the souls of all three were in peril; they
were sheep lost upon the mountain.
If it had not been for the discovery of these unclean volumes,
Grandfather would have had a search instituted at once for his nephew.
But to him they explained everything. He felt a destroying rage with
Amos; he could look upon him with far less leniency than upon Matthew
and Ellen. It was in his case as though a dog which for years pretended
gentleness had turned and rent the hand that fed it. He had practiced
a long piece of deceit; some of these books he must have had for
months. Grandfather pondered upon his comings and goings and decided
correctly upon the exact day on which he had made his first excursion
in search of literature. With fresh suspicion he took from the table
drawer "The Mystic Dove" and Amos's translation and discovered that
work had ceased months ago. He looked with tears at the marginal
scribblings.
"I trusted him too much," he said bitterly.
He sat waiting all the rainy afternoon and evening.
But Amos did not come. Night fell after a gloomy twilight and
Grandfather went exhausted to bed. He locked the door with a stern
pressing together of his thin lips, but after a while he rose and
unlocked it. He even opened it and, shivering, looked out into the
black landscape. But no human being was to be seen and only the mocking
blast of an automobile horn from the curve near by was to be heard.
Another day passed and Amos did not come. On the third day Grandfather
saw the rural carrier drop a letter into his box and hurried feebly to
the road. He opened it as he returned through the graveyard, but found
that he could not read. He was frightened until he remembered that he
did not have his spectacles.
But even spectacles did not make reading possible at once. He stared at
the sheet for a long time before he understood exactly what Amos meant.
"Dear Uncle, you will be surprised to hear that I am going to give up
my school. I have written to the directors. There are plenty others who
will be glad to have the place. Uncle, I have found peace. For a long
time I have been uneasy in a spiritual way. But I have found a friend
and he says that what I need is to work hard and the soul will take
care of itself. I work in the furnace and in the evening I am with him.
He is a Salvation Army worker. There are three men and two women who
work together. One man and one woman are married, the rest are single
people. It is like the idea of the Kloster in a way. I hope you were
not anxious. I had a heavy burden on me, Uncle."
When he at last understood, Grandfather was violently excited, not by
anger or by disappointment, but by hope. If Amos had found peace, so
much the better. But he need not stay away--this was the place for
him to labor; let him bring his friends here! Grandfather penned a
forgiving, welcoming response.
But Amos was not to be persuaded. He answered saying that he was glad
he was forgiven, but a life of meditation and prayer suited none of
them; they must be up and doing, the harvest was white. "It is our
custom to go where sin is," explained Amos. "We do not wait for sinners
to come to us."
"'We'!" repeated Grandfather.
The word had for Amos a specific meaning.
"There is a young woman here, Corporal Sally, who is a noble woman. She
has had a sad history, but has come through." Little did Grandfather
dream the struggling against sin, represented by a worldly Ellen,
behind these simple sentences!
Then, alas for both writer and reader, Amos explained that he could
no longer believe in the keeping of the Seventh Day, the ceremony of
Foot-washing, the exchange of the holy kiss. He did not hold them to be
the essentials of religion.
He said in conclusion that if Grandfather needed him, if he should
be sick, for instance, he could come at once. He signed himself
Grandfather's "in the Lord."
"In the Lord!" Grandfather lifted his stout old stick and brought it
down heavily. It struck "Esther Waters" and Esther fell to the floor.
"The Raft" was torn across one of its grimmest pages, "Madame Bovary"
was cruelly slashed.
Then a wilder mood came upon him. The end of the Kloster was decreed,
that was clear. The props were removed, the pillars loosened, the
foundations weakened. When he was gone no one would be left to cherish
the old buildings. Curiosity-seekers, long the bane of his existence,
would carry away the treasures of books and curios, the wooden blocks
upon which saintly heads had rested, the elaborate charts penned by
devoted fingers. An insistent antiquarian often visited Grandfather--he
would come and take that which he coveted and perhaps sell his loot,
making capital of the things of the saints! There was no rational
explanation of earthly affairs; reward was not given to merit, nor
peace of mind to those who deserved it. It would be well to make an
end.
His anger quickened. The Kloster was his; even in human law he
might claim it, might sell it, do as he liked with it, as the last
Seventh-Day Baptist. After him there would be no one who had any real
claim upon it.
Suddenly he had a vision. He saw clean, merciful, leaping flames doing
quickly what time would do gradually. The suggestion seemed to come
miraculously and with it a plan for its carrying-out. There was an
angle where the Saal and Saron joined, where a pile of kindling could
be laid. He felt an overwhelming weariness with life and an eager
desire to be rid of it. He began to plan cunningly.
In the night he took from his woodbox an armful of fine kindling and
carried it up the stone steps and round the meeting-house to the
spot which he had selected. The night was cloudy and there was not a
sound, not even the distant baying of a dog or the echo of footsteps.
He returned and secured two matches, the small can from which he
filled his brass lamp, and also the ponderous key. He would look for
the last time upon the treasures which he loved. He opened the door
of the meeting-room in the Saal. The old benches, the table with its
superimposed reading-stand which formed the pulpit, the faded charts
on the wall--he saw them clearly, though their outlines were almost
invisible. He repeated to himself the inscription on one of the charts,
then he stood trembling and sighing.
He walked through the meeting-room to the kitchen where of old meals
had been prepared for visiting brethren and their families who came to
spend days in worship--he groaned as he thought of their multitude, a
far greater multitude in his dreams than they had been in reality.
The interior of Saron was black, but he needed no light. He touched
lovingly an ancient chair, an old loom, a row of pewter spoons, a
hand-woven basket. He climbed last of all to the matin room. Now he was
breathing heavily. The thought of Amos had returned, filling him with
rage. Matthew and Ellen were children, his children, but Amos was not.
He hoped that the forthcoming tragedy would haunt Amos all his days. He
meant to come back to this room and await his end.
He went trembling down the steep steps and out to the angle of the
wall where he had laid the little woodpile. He struck a match and
its light showed faintly. He had selected the spot cunningly; it was
invisible from all points except a field, and in this field, sown with
winter wheat, there was certain to be no observer. The fire would
not be discovered until the flames leaped through the roof and the
opposite wall. When he tried to light the wood it did not burn, and he
remembered his coal-oil and lifted the can.
But before he had tilted it Grandfather paused. He had given the hours
of a long life, not to dreams of arson and self-destruction, but to
meditations upon the majesty and the goodness of God. His visit to the
matin room had started a familiar train of thought. He ceased suddenly
to hear the crackling of flames and the thunder of falling beams and
rafters and thick old walls; he heard the sweet and heavenly singing
of women far above his head, the ethereal sounds issuing from fasting
bodies. He forgot his rage, he forgot Ellen and Matthew and Amos,
he forgot himself. His wrongs ceased to be real; the realities were
white-robed choirs, a heavenly peace of mind. He stood listening.
After a long time he carried the oil can and the wood back to the
cottage and put them in their places. Then he opened the window and sat
down. It was almost midnight, the hour when Father Friedsam had been
accustomed to waken his spiritual children so that they might worship
their Creator. With folded hands and monkish mien Grandfather rose and
stepped out of his cottage and up the stone steps to the meeting-house
and there ascended the pulpit platform. The room which he saw was not
this dim, low-ceiled room of his ministry; it was a loftier room with a
latticed gallery for singers. He saw before him an entering procession,
and alone in the darkness he lifted his voice and praised God with a
psalm.